MOSCOW, February 6 (AVN) - Director-General of the Russian Ammunition Agency Zinovy Pak announced on Tuesday Russia's proposals aimed at halving the cost of the chemical disarmament programme.
Pak was speaking at a meeting with Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Jose Bustani. His proposals concerned elimination of Russian stocks of poisonous substances and their production sites.
The proposals have yet to be approved by President Vladimir Putin, after which they will be submitted to the Organisation, Pak told the Military News Agency after the meeting. Russia is hoping that the proposals will be endorsed, as there is a necessity to optimise expenses, he said.
Russia is having a very hard time implementing obligations envisaged by the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of All Types of Chemical Weapons and on their Destruction, the director went on. The problem emerged due to various reasons, mostly poor financing, he said. "The world has grounds to doubt that Russia will cope with the obligations to eliminate chemical weapons that it undertook in 1993," Pak admitted.
"Unfortunately, Russia failed to accomplish first-stage tasks that envisaged elimination of one percent of chemical weapon stocks - 400 tonnes - by the end of 2000. We contacted the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and asked to reschedule the deadline, undertaking to destroy the above-mentioned 400t during the second stage that ends on April 29, 2001, when we are to eliminate 20 percent of chemical weapon stocks," he said.
Pak said he and Bustani had considered whether Russia would be able to implement the Convention in general and whether it would manage to destroy its 40,000t of chemical weapons and their production facilities by 2007. There is a hope that the Organisation will move the deadline to 2012, but it is "very vaguel," he noted.
Nevertheless, Bustani listened very attentively to Pak's report on the measures that Russia has taken to ensure the chemical weapons destruction programme's implementation and praised the increase of funds allocated for it in the 2001 state budget.
The Russian government increased the financing six times to RUR3bn (USD105.41m) for the current year.